CLEVELAND (WJW) — Tooth number eight is one you really don’t want to lose. It’s right in the front and everyone knows when it’s missing.

For Karen Fitch, getting his fixed is a must.

 “I actually fell while walking the dogs and knocked out a part of my front tooth so I had to get the rest extracted,” Fitch said.

While the extraction was done with human hands, the replacement is being done by a robot, controlled by human hands.

The robot is called YOMI, a dental robot currently in use at the Case Western Dental School. Dentists say YOMI can perform implant surgery with incredible precision, especially when something like a permanent implant.

Dentists input a scan into YOMI which takes another scan of the patient’s mouth. It then matches up the scans and calculates the depth and width needed to insert the implant.  

Dentists then maneuver the machine into position, and it does the work, drilling into bone, placing the implant and securing it in half the time it would take a human dentist to do it.

Case Western Dental School is one of only a handful of dental schools in the country with the YOMI device. Doctors say this machine could be the beginning of new treatments.

Using robots for surgery is nothing new, but for dentists, it is because of the tight spaces they have to work in.

Dentists say that YOMI and other machines like it could become the standard in many dental offices in the next ten years.